Forward Deployed Manufacturing Engineer

Instrumental Inc.; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 155,000 - 179,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Vision insurance

Dental insurance

commuter plans

Parental leave

Job summary

Instrumental Inc. is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to be embedded on customer factory sites in North America. You will own missions, build trust with floor teams, and drive corrective action from finding to measurable impact on yield, throughput, or time-to-market.

You will travel extensively, up to 80% during peak periods, and collaborate with global teams to accelerate customer value. Mandarin fluency is highly beneficial for some customer lines.

Qualifications

• Hands-on time on a factory or contract manufacturing floor.
• Ability to pinpoint what changed in product architecture and why.
• Ability to identify the owner of a finding and drive action.

Responsibilities

• Travel to customer factory sites, primarily North America, to own mission success.
• Develop relationships with customer and factory stakeholders to move findings into action.
• Investigate manufacturing questions using build flow and production data to form hypotheses.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to improve playbooks and scale solve delivery.

Skills

Factory floor experience

Root cause analysis

Stakeholder management

On-site deployment

Travel readiness

Mandarin fluency

Tools

Instrumental Solve

Job description

As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll be embedded on-site at customer factory sites — not visiting, not consulting remotely, but physically there for the stretches it takes to see a mission through. You'll use Instrumental Solve and the data it surfaces to investigate manufacturing issues, but the real work starts after the finding: knowing the specific product's architecture and build flow well enough to know what actually changed, and knowing the specific people on the floor well enough to get something done about it. Data tells you where to look; it's what you know about the product and the people that gets something fixed.

Beyond the investigation work, this role gives you something harder to find: a line that’s genuinely yours to run. You'll make the calls — what to fix first, how to work with the customer, what "done" looks like — without waiting on sign-off or a pre-built roadmap. You'll be the person the customer turns to and trusts, with real room to shape how things go.

About Instrumental

Instrumental builds the manufacturing acceleration platform behind the world’s most complex electronics. We capture digital exhaust and engineering context from assembly lines—images, test logs, BOM data, performance, repair cycles, and our AI engines identify insights that are difficult or impossible for human engineers to find. We accelerate the companies building the AI era by improving manufacturing yield, throughput, and ramp. NVIDIA, Meta, L3Harris, and their manufacturing partners rely on Instrumental to accelerate new product introduction and production.

We’re Looking For Someone Who

• You have real, hands-on time on a factory or contract manufacturing floor — not adjacent to it, on it. You know how a build actually runs.
• You can go deep enough on a specific product's architecture and build flow to recognize what changed and why — this matters more than general data fluency.
• You know how to find the right owner for a finding — who can actually act on it, what they're measured on, and whether there's a real window to act. A well-supported finding sent to the wrong person still goes nowhere, and you know that going in.
• You build real trust with the people on the floor and in engineering — not by reporting well, but by being present, credible, and useful over time.
• You're comfortable being physically on-site, often for extended stretches. This is a majority-travel, factory-deployed role — not a headquarters seat.
• You drive corrective action all the way to completion — you stay with a finding until it actually changes something measurable, not until it's handed off.
• You thrive in ambiguity and take ownership without waiting for perfect instructions.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Own a Mission and Deliver on It. You'll travel to customer factory sites, primarily in North America, with a specific, company-critical mission. Common missions may include setting up and integrating physical equipment and accelerating customer "time to value" by hand-tuning Instrumental algorithms and software. You'll have support from our global team, but you'll be the engineer on the ground who owns mission success.
• Build Relationships with Customer and Factory Stakeholders. While onsite, you'll build real rapport with the people who determine whether a finding turns into action — learning who owns what, what they're accountable for, and how to work within that. You'll leverage those relationships to move quickly, and cement a strong, dependable reputation for yourself and Instrumental. During peak periods, travel ratio may be as high as 80% of the time – and may include transiting in evenings and on weekends.
• Investigate and Drive Root Cause to Resolution. You'll dig into ambiguous manufacturing questions, using your knowledge of the product's build flow alongside production and test data to form hypotheses and land on validated findings. You won't stop at the finding — you'll drive the corrective action through until it actually changes yield, throughput, or time-to-market.
• Shape How Instrumental Delivers Solve at Scale. You'll partner with Product and Engineering on what you're seeing in the field — product gaps, repeatable patterns, workflow fixes — helping build the playbooks that make the next mission faster than the last.

We are ideally looking for an individual fluent in Mandarin.

We are open to all types of candidates however, Mandarin fluency will be very beneficial for work on our customer's manufacturing lines.

We're a growing team that works collaboratively, supports each other, and is energized by having impact. We value passion and the ability to learn – you're encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't match the job description precisely!

The following is a representative annual base salary range for this position within the Bay Area: $155,000-$179,000. This position is also eligible for performance-based cash bonuses and growth-stage equity participation. In addition, job level and salary opportunities are evaluated through our interview process – we review the experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities of each applicant.

Instrumental is proud to offer a highly-rated variety of benefits, including health, vision, dental, commuter plans, and parental leave.